There is a natural human desire for autonomy. People need to express their individualism and to be able to make their own choices. We are wired to want the freedom to decide, to do, and to be what we want. In this edition of By Your Life, we discuss the seriousness of the choices we make.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2020/20_02_16.mp3

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – February 16, 2020

Welcome to the ninety-ninth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Year A). The first line from our first reading from the Book of Sirach says, “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you.” (Sir 15:15) He goes on to say that fire and water, life and death, good and evil will be set before us and whichever we choose will be given to us. (Sir 15:16-17) This is the frightening truth of our free will. We can have whatever we choose.

There is a natural human desire for autonomy. People need to express their individualism and be able to make their own choices. We are wired to want the freedom to decide, to do, and to be what we want. God so respects our freedom; he will allow us to experience life or death, good or evil. He will give us what we choose.

Many people do not realize the potential of our free will. Millions of people go to work because they “have” to. They go through the motions day after day in jobs they hate. They choose to allow their circumstances to trap them. They choose to allow others to set goals for them and then complain about it. Chances are, this is someone you work with. Maybe this is you.

Now, I know that there are some things about our lives that we did not choose like the circumstances of our birth, who our family is, and events that molded us thus far. You cannot change where you came from, but you can choose where you go. You cannot choose what happens to you in life. But you can choose how you respond to your life’s events, and these choices are God’s gift of free will.

If you read from the 15^th chapter of the Book of Sirach where our first reading was taken, and back up one verse, Ben Sira wrote, “God in the beginning created human beings, and made them subject to their own free choice.” (Sir 15:14) This is another frightening truth of our free will. God will give us what we choose, including the rewards and consequences of those choices and we become subject to those consequences. When we realize the power of this truth, our lives change.

In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey shared three sentences that had a powerful impact on his life. These three sentences are: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” What impacted Covey so greatly was the realization that habits, or our stimulus-response conditioning, can be changed. There is a space between stimulus and response where we have the ability to choose. Over time, with choice after choice, we make ourselves into the types of persons we become—for good or for bad.

This is true of individuals and of organizations. A lot of my work with clients is in the area of core values and creating a winning company culture. One thing I believe to be true is that no one gets up in the morning thinking “I’m going to go to work today and make this the most stinking, toxic place to work that I possibly can.” Yet, I often encounter a toxic culture and when I do, there is usually a lot of finger-pointing going on from one department to the next, from one division to another, and from upper management to lower management and back. Everyone is pointing to someone or somewhere else as the cause of the problem. When I ask, “Why do you work here?”, people are taken aback. They never thought to ask themselves that question. Many don’t feel they have a choice. But they do.

So, when I coach individuals or groups, one of the first steps is to help them realize the personal power that exists within their ability to choose. It is a change in how they think that moves them from “I have to” thinking to “I choose to” thinking, from “they made me” thinking to “I allowed them” thinking. This change in mindset is empowering simply because you move away from a place where you don’t believe you have control, to a place where you recognize that you do.

This is a change in thinking I find myself choosing to practice every day. If I didn’t, I’d get sucked into a negative place where victims live. People working in a toxic environment don’t realize that they are just as much the cause as they are the solution. The question is, which direction do they choose to go?

On our resources page, you can find a link to a short book by John G. Blumberg titled Good to the Core: Building Value with Values. In this book, he writes that most of us want to be good to the core. “We don’t go running away from our values, we go drifting away. And one day we wake up in a place we never meant to be, drifting in a direction we never would have chosen.” Although we don’t even realize it is happening, the truth is that we are choosing every step of the way.

This leads me to our Gospel for this Sunday. Jesus warns us against this human tendency to slide down a slippery slope slowly drifting away from our values. He said, “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” (Mt 5:21-22) He knows that uncontrolled anger leads down a slippery slope to greater sin.

He also said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:27-28) He knows that adultery begins with impure thoughts, so don’t even go there.

Unfortunately, our culture has already drifted away, if the halftime show at the Super Bowl is any indication. I read one comment from a man who applauded the halftime performance saying, “God created our bodies and then gave us a free will to do with them what we want!”. I’m pretty sure this guy has never read what God said in this week’s Gospel. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:19)

To help us choose the right path, God gave us His Law and Jesus intensified it. He didn’t water it down to what the people thought was acceptable. He raised the standard. From a company perspective, whether they explicitly recognize it or not, all businesses also refer to standards for decision making. These standards are hierarchical, like rungs on a ladder. In some organizations, decisions are made from the bottom rung of the ladder. Leaders of these companies ask, “Is it legal?” The guiding question for companies that operate on the next higher rung is, “Is it ethical?” And from the top rung of the ladder, where values-based companies operate, the primary question is, “Does it honor our core values?”

When I wrote my book, The Value of Core Values, I interviewed Mark Mazur, the president of MJM Electric, a commercial electrical contractor. They wire phosphate mines, breweries, powerhouses, and even nuclear power plants. It’s some of the most difficult and dangerous electrical work there is, so safety and quality are their priorities.

They discovered that their workers were getting multiple finger lacerations on a project, so their safety committee recommended giving every employee a pair of cut-proof gloves. These gloves are much better than leather gloves—even a knife won’t cut through them—but they cost about ten times as much.

There’s no law requiring safety gloves. Hard hats are required by law on a job site, but not these gloves. But Mark felt it was the right thing to do, so he approved the expenditure for the more expensive cut-proof gloves.

The workers liked the new gloves so much they started using them all the time, even at home. They were wearing them out and losing them so fast that it was costing the company a lot of money. So, the question came up, how many pairs of these cut-proof gloves should the company provide each employee?

Mark Mazur decided to give his people as many pairs as they needed and not worry about whether they wore them out, lost them, or took them home. He figured that if they spent $20,000 a year on gloves and nobody cut a finger it would be money well spent.

If MJM had been operating from the bottom rung of the ladder, management wouldn’t have furnished gloves at all because they weren’t legally required to. If they had been operating from the middle rung, where ethics guide decisions, they might have supplied one pair of gloves because it would be unethical not to protect your employees from a known danger. But because MJM operated from the highest rung, where core values guided their decisions, they supplied as many pairs as necessary.

Choice by choice, we can either live our beliefs and move up the ladder from legal, to ethical, to values-centered or slide down the slope from “Is it legal?” to “Will we get caught?” Whichever we choose, we will be subject to our own free choice.

St. Pope John Paul II taught us that our free choices always accomplish two things. The first is what we in do a certain situation, and the second is to contribute to our moral formation.  When we make free choices, we are choosing the kind of person we are becoming. Over time, with choice after choice, we make ourselves into particular types of persons, for good or for bad. The repeated pattern of choices is what become our habits. The saint is someone who through freedom integrates God’s laws into his life so deeply that they become his own. They become second nature to him. They become his habits.

The Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said, “If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.” If we choose to, we can keep the commandments and they will save us. (Sir 15:15) If not, we will be choosing damnation. That is the frightening truth of our free will.

Let’s pray for wisdom this week as we make thousands of seemingly inconsequential choices.

Heavenly Father, send us your Spirit so that when we are presented with choices this week, that we will choose to keep your commandments. Strengthen our resolve to do what is right and avoid what is wrong and to be a true friend to others when we see that they are straying. Awaken in us the desire to honor you in all we do.

May God bless you abundantly this week and as you glorify the Lord by your life.

If you liked this episode, spread the word. You know what to do, forward, share, or click to post. Also, check out the Resources page where you can find a link to the books and other resources mentioned in this and other episodes of By Your Life. I’m always interested in what you think, so give me some feedback by leaving a comment.